Category: Real Estate

Here is a ready reckoner FAQ on the basics Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT’s) and Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs) in the form of an FAQ. This covers key information for the layman and is meant to serve as a basic introduction. With Embassy office Park REIT IPO, there is a renewed interest in these instruments. However,…

The government announced in the interim budget on 1st Feb 2019 that house property capital gains exemption under section 54 of the income tax act can be claimed by the purchase of two new house (residential) properties. Also read: Revised Tax Rebate Under Section 87A (FY 2019-2020) Explained Existing House property capital gains exemption (section 54) Section…

Buying a house is often an emotional decision and as I have argued before, it makes no sense to use buy vs rent calculators. In this post, I discuss the pros and cons of buying a house as soon as possible vs later vs never. Regardless of what decision we make (or have made) it…

Here is a ready reckoner FAQ on the basics Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT’s) and Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs) in the form of an FAQ. This covers key information for the layman and is meant to serve as a basic introduction. With Embassy office Park REIT IPO, there is a renewed interest in these instruments. However,…

Budget 2017 has proposed a slew of benefits related to long-term capital gains. The most important is the shift of the base year to be used for long-term capital gains computation for all asset classes. Here is a summary and illustration of long-term capital gains computation with base year 2001. 1: Change in duration for computation…

The rent received from a house property is treated as income and taxed as per slab. However, certain deductions are eligible for this taxable amount. Budget 2017 had restricted the amount of deduction one can claim. Here is an illustration and a revised real estate returns calculator. The taxable income is given by: rent –…

‘Should I buy a house/apartment now’ or ‘should I continue to stay in a rented accommodation?’ I am sure you would agree that this is a common dilemma faced by many youngsters. In fact, although there are several decent ‘rent’ vs. ‘buy’ calculators available, I continue to receive requests to make one. For a variety…

Here are five reasons why I will never invest in real estate. This is me taking sides on the equity vs. real estate debate. There is more to investing than returns. So instead of comparing past returns of both asset classes and claiming equity won or real estate won, I would like to consider other…

There is a strong buzz that real estate prices are going to crash. I can count three types of people who are contributing to this buzz: 1) Presstitute-portals – they don’t know need a rhyme or reason. All they want is traffic. 2) Those who sell equity products – what better chance to remind their…

Use this calculator to analyze if you should pre-pay your home loan asap or invest instead. This is now republished after correcting a bug pointed out by Ankush. I had posted an illustration of prepay vs invest in June but did not post the associated sheet. I have now modified the sheet to include new…